


Sharpe's Tribute

by GloriaMundi



Category: Sharpe - Cornwell
Genre: C19, Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-15
Updated: 2003-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-05 18:59:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The long war is finally over: time for sentimentality, opportunism and making it personal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sharpe's Tribute

The carpet under Sharpe's knees was thick, and the colours had once been bright. Now it was spoilt with damp, and smelt of mildew. Sharpe was used to the smell. It reminded him of endless autumn campaigns, marching each day in wet boots without enough time to dry his kit by the fire before morning came round again.

There was something strange about the smell of his enemy's sweat, a sharp bitter tang on his skin that made Sharpe think of peach stones. But he'd encountered worse, back in the rookery; and anyway, he hadn't expected to enjoy this. He breathed through his nose and sucked harder.

* * *

The afternoon was hot and humid, and Sharpe's green jacket made him sweat. His linen shirt clung to his skin as though he'd been caught in a rainstorm. The storm had rumbled around the mountains while they were riding up the long road towards the house. It was only after he and Harper were indoors, standing in this stuffy room with the Spanish officers from the _Espiritu Santo_, that the rain had begun to fall outside the villa.

The man they had come to visit had once been an Emperor. Thousands of men and women -- soldiers and scholars, courtesans and courtiers -- had served him. Now rats scurried behind the wainscoting, and a single servant in tattered green and gold fetched metal pails to catch the water that dripped from the ceiling.

Sharpe watched in silence as Bonaparte spoke with the Spanish officers. He was caught between fascination and repugnance at the closeness of the Emperor against whose armies he had fought for so long. Too many friends -- and many enemies -- had died for this man's ambitions. Things were never that simple, though. Sharpe himself had done the Emperor a favour, once. And he had dared to speak of it here, this afternoon, to the captive tyrant with the astonishing eyes.

Now the Spaniards had been banished to the billiard room, and Sharpe and Harper were seated -- seated! -- in the presence of the man they had been told to address as 'his Majesty'.

For now, it was not important that they had been on different sides. Bonaparte was pathetically eager to hear a soldier's account of Waterloo. Sharpe and Harper were drawn into the same spell that had ensnared so many before them: the sheer charisma that had driven Bonaparte from Corsica to Paris, and fuelled his Empire's spread over all Europe.

"So you're going to Chile?" the Emperor asked.

"Yes, sir," said Sharpe.

The Emperor had clearly been told of the affair in Naples: had been told, and had remembered. His body might be soft and bloated, but his mind was as sharp, still, as an assassin's knife. "Will you do me another service now?" he asked Sharpe directly.

"Of course, sir."

There was a man in Chile, an admirer; so Bonaparte said. Perhaps Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe would be kind enough to deliver a gift to him? Merely a portrait, a keepsake. It was rare to meet anyone who was going to Chile... Sharpe suspected that there would be more than just a keepsake in the package that was being prepared for him to carry to Valdivia. He didn't care.

"Will you excuse us?" the Emperor said to Harper then. Despite his mild tone, it was a command, and Harper had been a soldier for long enough to understand that. Though Bonaparte's aide was quick to murmur a translation, Harper was already standing. "Of course, sir." His gaze flickered to Sharpe, and Sharpe tried to look unconcerned.

The aide opened the door for Harper, and bowed as he left the room behind the Irishman. The liveried servant had already disappeared, no doubt serving more stale lemonade to the Spanish officers as they waited restlessly in the billiard room. Sharpe was left alone in the warm, gloomy room with the former Emperor.

Bonaparte rose to his feet and began to pace to and fro in front of the empty fireplace. Sharpe stood too, awkwardly, as unsure of himself as a raw recruit.

"I feel old, Sharpe," Bonaparte complained. "I am not old, no, but I feel it." His smile was mirthless. "They are poisoning me, you know?"

Sharpe opened his mouth to deny it. The Governor was an honourable man, and would not stoop ... But Sharpe knew that the highest echelons of government were as corrupt as any other. And Bonaparte's unhealthy sallowness, the acrid reek of his sweat, the puffiness of his face, all spoke of poison rather than any natural sickness.

"I regret it extremely, sir," he said.

"I will die here, on this rock that no one should ever have discovered," the Emperor said. "They fear me too much, even now, to let me die in my own country. I shall die a prisoner, Sharpe!" His voice dropped. "Never to feel the first frost again. Never to gallop a horse, or embrace a lover."

He paused, and Sharpe felt obliged to fill the silence. "Surely the Governor does not deny you ... female company, sir?" he said, with as much delicacy as he could muster.

The Emperor made a disgusted noise. "Whores and slaves. Whores and slaves! I, who had royalty in my bed, princesses, generals ... Do you know," he demanded of Sharpe, "how long it is since -- But no." Bonaparte turned away, shoulders slumping. "There is no reason why you should care."

But Sharpe had seen the spark spring to life in the Emperor's dulled gaze. For the first time he wondered if Bonaparte had lost something more personal than an Empire at Waterloo. He felt pity that such a man had fallen so far: pity, and something more.

"I believe," he found himself saying diffidently, eyes on the stained carpet at his feet, "that there is another service I might perform for you, sir."

The rain outside the windows seemed very loud. Sharpe could feel his face heating as he imagined the Emperor's curt rejection. At last he dared to look up.

It had rained before Waterloo, too. Sharpe and Harper had stood in the rain and stared at the Emperor Napoleon parading before his troops. At last, after so many years... Old Boney was no ogre after all, but only a short stocky man, not much older than Sharpe himself, riding a white gelding with mud-speckled legs. Sharpe hadn't been able to hate or despise him. All he had felt was relief.

Beside him, Harper had been grinning: he was only there, he said, to see Napoleon. Sharpe had smiled too. Maybe it had simply been the sense of completion, of ending: of the long war finally being over.

Now Bonaparte was smiling at him, and there was something in that smile that might have been relief or gratitude or respect. He had understood Sharpe very well; they were both soldiers, after all, with all the sentimentality and opportunism that implied. He did not try to hide his pleasure at the offer.

And this would be an ending, too. For Sharpe it meant a conclusion, an act of mercy after half a lifetime of battle. For Bonaparte ... who could say whether such a chance would come again?

* * *

And so Richard Sharpe knelt at last before the former Emperor of France, paying him homage in a way that he had never expected. Somewhere in the house, Harper and the Spaniards chafed at the wait, and the liveried servant offered more warm, weak lemonade. The man who had held all Europe in his palm now whimpered under Sharpe's ministrations, hands hot against Sharpe's temples as he muttered encouragement in a dialect so strong that Sharpe could barely make out the words.

It had been a long time for him, too: a long time since he'd been with a man, though he hadn't forgotten any of the tricks. How to run his tongue along the underside of the shaft, how to make a spit-slick tunnel of his fingers. It all came back. He remembered that night after Waterloo, when Harper had told him that he was going back to Ireland ... That had been out of love, though, and this was not love.

The Emperor's skin was clammy, and his black breeches clung sweatily to his thighs. Sharpe, steadying the older man with a firm arm behind his knees, could feel his pulse racing. For a moment he panicked. What if the tyrant's heart failed now, alone with a Rifleman in the gloomy dusk? Sharpe would be a convenient scapegoat, a warm body to dangle from the gallows, and no one would ever know that he had only been trying to give Bonaparte a few moments of happiness.

His tongue faltered, and the Emperor swore and clenched his fat fingers in Sharpe's hair. Emboldened, Sharpe took him deeper, revelling in the sense of power over this legendary monster. The muscles in his throat tightened at the unaccustomed intrusion -- and at last, mercifully, Bonaparte gasped and spent himself deep in Sharpe's throat.

The acrid taste was stronger, but Sharpe swallowed anyway. It would have been unthinkable to spit.

"Thank you," said the Emperor softly. The little victory of orgasm had rekindled the spark in his eyes. He stood straighter, unembarrassedly adjusting his clothing.

Sharpe could think of nothing to say. He smiled, fighting down a powerful urge to retch. Then Bonaparte was pouring a glass of wine and handing it to him, and he gulped it down, grateful for the cleansing burn.

"You have honoured me," Bonaparte said. "I wish that I had the power to reward you for that."

"I don't ask for any reward, sir," said Sharpe plainly. He was afraid for a moment that the Emperor would offer to reciprocate, and find him cold and unaroused.

"Well. They will be waiting, and the package will be ready." For a moment, Bonaparte looked almost sad. "You must go."

"I hope you will ... remember me, Sir," Sharpe said clumsily.

"My days are not so rich that I forget my visitors." The Emperor smiled at him, and Sharpe felt compelled to smile back. Now that it was done with, he longed to be out of the web, out of the dark room.

* * *

"You can see why they're still afraid of him," Harper said as they rode back down the mountain in the rain.

Sharpe grunted.

"It's his eyes," said Harper. "They charm you. Make you want to ... to swear your oath, or pay tribute, though God knows he's lost more than you or I will ever see."

Sharpe said nothing. He was blushing, but it was dark. Maybe Harper wouldn't notice.

Harper looked askance at him, and nodded to himself. "You got what you came for, then?" he said.

He had made it personal; he had a memory like a medal to take out and polish in the years of peace ahead. "He gave me a keepsake," said Sharpe gruffly. He did not touch the locket at his throat.

He would remember.

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> The events in this story occur between the lines of Bernard Cornwell's novel _Sharpe's Devil_.


End file.
